


Restless

by verywhale



Category: Joker (2019)
Genre: Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Insomnia, M/M, Selfcest, Violent and Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:09:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23664424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verywhale/pseuds/verywhale
Summary: Arthur doesn't sleep, and tries to convince Joker to join him.
Relationships: Arthur Fleck/Joker (Joker 2019)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Restless

There’s so much stuff to do when you don’t sleep. The uselessness of this action which you cannot afford becomes absolutely evident when you glance over the results of your productivity.

This is why their apartment is always so clean, at least compared to the streets circling around the house. The dishes are glinting in the acid cyan of the lamp as if they are proud of Arthur for scrubbing them even harder than they deserved. He holds his palm, shaping itself into fist and then reverting, on the surface of last cleaned plate, waiting for its permission to shatter it and dribble its twins with that tar that runs through his vessels. It says no, and Arthur frowns before moving onto the next task. The dust spawns out of nowhere and coats floor and appoitments, but Arthur has enough time to wipe it all away while it keeps coming and coming. He could do it all night, and even if he succeeded in eliminating all actual dust, he would make up more of it just to have something to do.

His eyes sometimes itch at the look over the placement of their furniture, and feel every so relieved when he turns and moves every piece just by an inch. Enough for his mother to ignore and for him to get some slight satisfaction. It doesn’t work for the box of his clothes, however. The way they ravel around each other no matter his attempts at disconnecting them, folding them neatly, or shoving them deep in the box so they don’t irritate him with their presence, makes the walls of his head vibrate so soundly that he starts nauseating. So he leaves them be, although knowing that ignoring their existence won’t make them disappear. But he’s too tired of thinking of another useless solution that would only worsen it further. A laughter echoes in his chest when he lets this thought inside him.

For once, he remembers that while keeping his surroundings clean, he also shouldn’t forget about doing so to his body. While the bathtub is filling, he finds himself engaged in counting moles on the reflection of his face. Numbers slip off the tips of his fingers, so he spits and starts anew every time; and every time the final count is somehow different. He thinks that his hands have turned into brushes so he ends up drawing new features onto himself.

Then the faucet shuts up, and Arthur lets the greaze float away when he sits up to lips in the water. There’s an urge poking him in the ribs to dive a bit deeper, so the water can fill the void inside him, soothe its maniacal beating and chill the hot steam emerging from it. His lips are but a thin slice of blue, and he imagines the rest of his body taking this color after he could’ve no longer checked it. Warped splotches of his face stare at him from the surface, fluttering lightly from cold. He realizes that his skin wouldn’t be perfectly glazed with blue everywhere, but instead there would be angry and ugly patches of mauve and maroon on his backside and his soles due to him sitting. This thought, burning in his lungs and drumming in his barred mouth, pushes him out of the water.

Even when the towel absorbs all moisture and leaves nothing but a lean dessicated husk, Arthur is still shivering. His legs drive him by themselves towards the shelf in the living room and his hands grab and tear down a new cigarette pack and his mouth takes out one of its habitants. The warmth of dry smoke spreads through his vessels and hugs every cell in a way that doesn’t allow them to move. Pale twirls dance in the black stifled air, and Arthur moves along, just as slow and ethereal. Every step is but a careful tune for the radio weeping and groaning in his head.

When the ghosts get tired of dancing, Arthur turns on the TV and immediately wrings the volume control all way counterclockwise until the only sound he hears is the whine of the machine itself. It’s a curious game he plays with himself. If a movie he sees on the screen is something he remembers from earlier, he fixates on the mouths of actors and they start speaking with his own voice, modifying itself when required. If there are the lines that stay shut in his memory and refuse to get out, he writes something new. This night, a lady in a mourning veil didn’t say anything other than wishes for Arthur’s bones to break and his aggravating voice to stop insulting her acting.

Sometimes there are movies that don’t need commentary. The shapes of the mouths speak even without sound, and so do their dreamy closed eyes and limbs twisted in suggestive gestures. Arthur takes a long drag to his cigarette, eyes fixed on a particular actress he reshapes to his liking. She would have shoulder-length amber hair, irises shady green and empty like a glass bottle, and claws and fangs drawn on her with a slick leaking pen. The poses she takes and the motions she makes are so bold and aggressive and so indulgent that the same very pen would scribble her body parts out. And the glue would drip over these sullen chaotic prosthetics to cover them with the skin of someone else, while the victim cries from the pages of cheap magazines—silently, uselessly. Arthur writhes, lips parting by themselves, and looks over his arms only to see that they are still the same scrawny and sickening, slashed all over with thin dashes of black and sprangled with deep dots of red. He turns off the TV.

The lamp clicks and its yellow beams pierce Arthur’s eyes. He’s now at the desk, a third or a fourth cigarette smouldering between his lips, ash further littering the illuminated pages already full of garbage Arthur takes out of his mind. It’s been the second week the words couldn’t form themselves into jokes, and the voice in his head has been cursing and shouting and leading the pen to document its tantrums. The same fragile voice that quickly runs out of strength before finding itself mutilated, mad laughter oozing from its fetid wounds like pus. Arthur’s lips are stubbornly curled and the edges of the pen’s glassy carcass delve into his fingertips while he draws something furious, something that would possibly haunt him in the depths of sleep—if he still could sleep. He must say he prefers these figures and faces, with their crippled toes growing out of shoulders and many rows of teeth digging into each other’s angular chins, to stay caged on the pages. A cat lady with a slim tanned body still winks at Arthur, paying no mind to the wide-eyed hungry monster aiming for her tail.

“See? You see?” Arthur calls out loud since sending the messages in a shape of ideas doesn’t seem to reach the target. “There are so many useful things we could do together.”

He rests somewhere under the blankets of memories, and keeps doing so when Arthur strips him of his hide. He’s said it before that he sleeps just so Arthur doesn’t have to, but this explanation doesn’t satisfy. Arthur still hopes to get him out, to share his restless activities, to have him comment on the progress and share a laugh or two while they are busy. He wonders if he sees any dreams. He wonders if they have Arthur in them, washing dishes and watching movies and burning and drowning himself while marinating in his loneliness.

They would sit on the couch facing each other. He would stretch his hands towards Arthur who’s almost trying to avoid his touch, painful in its fondness. He would blow into Arthur’s face if he continues evading like a scared feral cat. And while Arthur squints and grunts, he would clasp him around, drop him onto the couch and then look at him with that wild frisky gaze, Arthur’s confusion reflecting in his eyes, shady green and empty. His smile would be blazing red even in the darkness, and he would share it with Arthur for as long as he wants. Or not—he would rather withdraw when Arthur starts panting into his mouth through the kisses, or bite that throbbing upper lip in a non-playful way. His hand would be on Arthur’s neck, just two fingertips pressing themselves on the spots that make him squirm and gulp and roll his eyes until he sees only shimmering nothingness. He would gently kiss the wounds on Arthur’s pale arms, teeth on the scabs and tongue catching the amassing blood while it pleasantly sizzles. And Arthur would choke his traitorous moans while he does it all, bouncing between begging to stop and begging for more.

There’s so much stuff to do when you don’t sleep.


End file.
